Innovations in Book Marketing - A Guest Post By Greg Pincus

Greg's debut middle grade novel

Greg Pincus

As my friend, social media guru, and frequent SCBWI Conference Faculty member Greg Pincus' book launch party (for his "The 14 Fibs of Gregory K.") draws near (it's this Saturday, October 19, 2013), I asked Greg to share what he's up to marketing-wise, because it's pretty cool.

Greg's plan involves live-streaming his launch party, remote purchases - and orders for personalized signed copies - and triangulation from bookstore to facebook to blog to his intended audience.  Wait, that's not a triangle, it's parallelogram...

Here's Greg to explain:

I knew when I set up my book launch at the Flintridge Bookstore here in the greater Los Angeles area that the event would be a lot of fun... but, of course, not everyone who wanted to be part of the celebration would be able to make it. Besides the fact that there's never a perfect time when everyone is free, the truth is that because of social media, having lived on both coasts, and meeting people at conferences and the like, I have friends and family (and I think even fans!) all over the globe. So, I decided to make my launch a live online event, too, so that everyone could get a chance to celebrate together.

The Flintridge Bookstore also put together a way on their website for folks to order a copy of my book - and leave instructions for who to personalize it to. This way, people can order now or even during the launch party itself and be part of the event that way. The store will continue to let people order signed books from me after the launch, and if the personalizing thing is a big success, we hope to keep that going, too.

The challenge in all this is that it's technology and internet based and, well, anything could happen as the event draws near. Still, the tech I'm using is Google+'s Hangouts on Air (yay, social media!), and Google tends to be pretty reliable. In fact, one way to watch the event live is on my channel on Google-owned YouTube: it'll be streaming live from 3-5 Pacific time on Saturday, October 19th here.

The live event should (tech-willing!) also be available at my blog Gottabook at the same time.

I'll keep updating news at my blog and at the Facebook event I set up to let people know about the party. Watching should be easy, no matter where you do it.

It was fun to create something where all my friends (online and offline) could actually participate. Obviously, it's still not that perfect time when everyone's free... and some of the in-person fun (like PIE!) won't translate online... but there are so many people who've been part of my journey that having a chance to celebrate with them makes the possible hiccups seem pretty insignificant.

Greg's middle grade book is about hating math - or maybe figuring out how to love math - and it's definitely about loving pie (which Greg will be serving at the in-person event at the Flintridge Book Store launch party!)

You can find out more about Greg and THE 14 FIBS OF GREGORY K. and the launch - and how it all goes - at his blog Gottabook.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee